path to ai

Technological Augmentation

Emergent AI

Semantic Web

Recommendation Feed Engines

Single Website

Tech-Glasses

Collective Platforms

Neural-Link

Mobile/Augmented Web

3D Printing

Nanotechnology

Hive Mind

2010 2029?2013

AI Agents

AGI Agents

BCI

© Nathan Waters 2010. With credit to Tristan Grace.Feel free to distribute and change this however you want, just give some credit :)

2015

The following is an erratic thought-experiment to place the significant, incremental technologies required to produce true, emergent Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is a culmination of thousands of hours of discussions and parallel -thought experiments I've had with Tristan and others over the past 5 years. It is a work in progress and dates are approximate. If you have any further ideas, thoughts or feedback, please contact me via my blog. I'd love to hear from you!

Attention Economy

As an entrepreneur I believe the fastest and most effective method to achieve these stages is to develop companies and business models

to make them happen. You can follow the activities of our company, Singularitus, or

watch our video podcast, Hive45.

Anarcho-Capitalism

Conclusions

Evolutionary Paradigms

Singularity

Edutainment

**Start here**Preface

Economic Cooperation

Connection

Universal Spread

Knowledge Quest

Entropy Reversal

Path to AISaturday, February 06, 2010

AI Page 1

If you do not think the human species is capable of creating AI, or if you do not think AI could emerge, then please read thefollowing last. Even if you are unsure, please read this last, for it may cloud your judgment, and I would prefer you to foll ow my thought pattern from one technological paradigm to the next. I've attempted to write as simplistic as possible, using as many examples as possible; however my thoughts are still scattered even in writing, so I hope you can follow well enough :)

The creation of AI is truly the holy grail of human achievement. Intelligence has always been the key to the survival of our species and its continued advancement. Evolution via natural selection has luckily bestowed upon us not only the physical ability to manipulate our environment, but the cognitive ability to seek patterns and imagine solutions to the many problems we face. We're now entering into a post-Darwinian world where we can guide the evolutionary path of our technology and of ourselves, but do so at an exponential pace .

We are a collective species, much like ants and bees. As such, we are prone to create extraordinary feats through collective cooperation and collective intelligence. Take for example our global economy, or the Internet. Both of these are phenomena that have emerged via collective intelligence. No group or individual has any idea what is exactly happening, and no individual can explain the sys tems; they just are, and they work rather well on the macro scale.

This is why I think in regards to the development of Artificial Intelligence, it will not be realised solely by a well -coordinated effort by research groups or by companies like Google (who have said they're working on it). Instead, AI will gradually emerge by harne ssing the collective intelligence of the entire human populace all connected and interacting in much the same way as they already do online.

I attempt to make the case that the next stages of incremental consumer technologies will push the species towards the eventual outcome of connecting individual brains to each other on a neural level. Out of such an intimate connectedness, AI will most likely emerge as a result of such extreme collective intelligence. Whilst this AI may begin and appear as reliant on the continued use by the collective species, it won't take long for the system to fully automate itself and replace past human activities/behaviour with accurate , dynamic algorithms which advance further as each individual continues to utilise and rely on the interconnected system.

AI will emerge from collective intelligence.

PrefaceSunday, February 07, 2010

AI Page 2

Homo sapiens are single-handedly the most interesting animal species on this planet.

Question: Is it our bodies, our strength and our genetic disposition that allows us to thrive as the dominant species? No. Do we have any physical extremities that allow us to more easily catch prey (claws, sharp teeth, venom) or protect ourselves (fly, run fast, camouflage, spikes, poison)? Not really.

Instead we humans have relied rather intimately on the intellect our brains offer to keep us alive. Yes, we have great physical abilities to walk, run, swim, climb, grip objects, move objects, alter our environments, fine hand muscle movements (writing) and muscular air manipulation (speaking); but it is what those physical abilities can create when combined with our intellect . We are able to interpret problems (like keeping fed, warm, and sheltered from predators etc), then imagine potential solutions and find external environmental resources in which to make them realities (making fire from sticks or flint, using rocks and sharpened sticks to hunt etc).

Most of our global civilization now survives only on the aggregation of our technological progress. From the initial harnessing of fire, all the way to our global scientific and technological space -exploring empire. Without the discipline of science and its thorough attempt at impartial, rational, natural inquiry; you would probably not exist. Scientific research can be directly traced to all our modern technology which allow for a population of our current size, quality of life and life expectancies.

What is interesting to note, is that we all now augment ourselves with technology. Clothes are a technological extension of ourselves which keep us warm; our cars are extensions of our physical bodies which allow us to travel great distances; those with glasses owe their quality of vision to an augmented optics technology; our shoes are extensions of our feet; without refrigerators we would have difficulty maintaining a protein-rich meat diet; without oil, coal and electricity, including all the technologies required to extract and produce those energies: imagine what would happen.

With computers, mobile phones and our greater connected globe: we are building and distributing systems to act as technological extensions of our brains. Just as a car allows us to travel great distances, computers and the Internet allow us to store and retrieve greater memory; as well as find, retrieve, process and share information at a greater speed than our actual physical brains can match. You may not know what the capital of Botswana is, but within a few seconds you can query the super-machine-brain that is the Internet, and instantly access more information than you'd care to actually read.

Kevin Kellyhas some rather interesting and much greater in-depth thoughts on this area, which I encourage you to read or watch.

As we further enhance our technological capabilities, we'll begin to embed enhancements within ourselves rather than relying on external human technological augmentations.

I guess the big ethical question which plagues so many minds, becomes the question of what is it to be human; and as man and machine merge, at what point do we cease being "human"?… or is that a rather silly question to even begin with?

Technological AugmentationMonday, February 22, 2010

AI Page 3

Very heavily linked to the evolution of political systems and ideologies, but it is interesting to see our systems of government, politics and economics as a trial and error approach to achieving large -scale improvements in quality of life and fast -paced innovation.

Economic CooperationMonday, February 22, 2010

AI Page 4

We learnt pretty early on as a species that working together can achieve a lot more than trying to do things by ourselves. The concept of working together and sharing is drilled into us even today by our parents, teachers and employers. But it makes sense that two minds are better than one, and a group of minds can achieve things more quickly.

This concept operates in the same way the Internet does now. First we connected computers to computers, then computers to routers, then routers to the telephone grid, then ISP exchanges to each other, the countries to each other. Now we're connecting every individual to every other individual in the world, at all times, via mobile phones and 3G/4G access. By connecting the world's computers together we created the power of the Internet. By connecting the world's people together, what do we get?

It tends to always occur that by connecting at least two things together, and standardizing their communication mediums/protocols, you jump a level of possibilities. For example, take our language. On their own, letters are merely abstract scribbles. Make a bunch of those scribbles, share them around and you have an alphabet. Take the letters and combine them together, you have words. Take a bunch of words, put them together to make a sentence. Sentence to paragraph, paragraph to chapter, chapter to book. And of course we then double-back to explain the meaning of words using sentence (a combination of other words). The dictionary and our entire language is really just an interconnected delusion in some sense. And yet, such language combined with writing and verbal communication have allowed humans to share their thoughts and ideas. In doing so, we are able to work as a collective much more efficiently and effectively.

The Internet applies an identifier to each computer (the IP), then connects them all under a standardized communication medium (http, ethernet, tcp/ip etc). But funnily enough, this same process has already occurred in the offline world for many thousands of years.

As humans we are identified when we're first born with a word/noise (first names). You're also identified with a connection to your family (last name). We then each learn a standard geographically isolated language which allows for the standardized communication medium for us to talk to each other. We then form and segregate into different groups (our friends, workmates etc). We identified the physical location of where we lived, so that another standardized system (the postal service) could be developed, thus allowing us to send letters and packages very long distances. Again, the same thing occurred with the telephone system, with the Internet, and now at an even greater level of individual connection anywhere, at anytime… the mobile phone web.

Greater connection allows for greater achievements, but at the same time, greater reliance on the interconnectivity of all technology. Have a look at the James Burke documentary from a while back called Connections. Once we take the next level of connection hierarchy and begin connecting the data and information on the Internet (the Semantic Web), as well as begin connecting human minds to each other (Neural-Link) then we will see greater collective intelligence and thus greater achievements.

Individual neurons are quite "dumb" by themselves, but connect 100billion of them in a rather chaotic network, and you produce a brain capable of producing us, our consciousness, our intelligence, our subjective construct of the Universe.

ConnectionMonday, February 22, 2010

AI Page 5

This is an interesting phenomena in regards to computer-based learning, but more specifically the idea that computers are beginning to become our teachers; guiding our thoughts and opinions via entertaining mediums, such as games.

Guitar Hero (or Rockband) is an amazing piece of simple game architecture that presents a timid, but substantial move toward a future where we are taught by computers to be more intelligent, or even more musically adept to rhythm as is the case with Guitar Hero. We're starting to see games that utilise the addictive nature of RPG games with rewards, levels of accomplishment and clever use of symbols to teach players real-world applicable knowledge/education.

Guitar Hero has an ability to be intuitive enough for a first-time player to pickup the basics very quickly. I've also noticed that often you'll begin a song missing a lot of notes, but you rapidly learn the rhythm and start gaining confidence to finish the song well. As you watch a player advance over time through the 5 levels of difficulty, you can see they have clearly learnt a lot of the skills to best play the guitar/drums/bass/vocals controllers (which feel realistic despite being plastic instrument controllers). But looking back throughout gaming history, this has always been the case. As players advance through a game, they learn the skills to become better at the game, which helps them pass each incremental level. They go from being "noobs" to advanced gamers, for that particular game scenario. Thus sophisticated games or edutainment of the future could actually be used to solve global real -world problems by harnessing the collective intelligence of millions of players. Or games could be used to teach millions of players specific skills/knowledge/opinions that would enhance their intelligence and problem-solving skills.

This same system, the same game has been running around the globe for decades already, the Internet. Browsing the web has become the predominant #1 past-time for a large percentage of the population, particularly those under 30. By browsing the web, reading various articles, posts, comments, watching videos and making use of all that the web has to offer… we are actually improved in some way. Yes, it could have the opposite effect if all you do online is just look at funny pictures. However with the Internet now, people are able to research, learn and educate themselves on anything in their own time, at their own pace, for free. A great site I use every day is Reddit, and what's interesting is many members publicly thank the community for helping them learn so much about various topics. Personally I think I have learnt more about the world and numerous topics of interest, via daily web surfing, than I have probably learnt in my entire period of formal education.

The Internet already is feeding our brains and enhancing our intelligence. The entire network infrastructure, telephone exchanges, server farms, and the web itself with all the data, information and websites could be labeled "AI in Construction".

Think about it. What you are reading now was written by myself using a rather "dumb" laptop with arbitrarily-placed plastic buttons that route electricity for processing. I wrote this in your past, uploaded it to the Internet "machine" where you came across it, asked the Internet "machine" to show it to you, and now you're reading this information.

As we reach matured Recommendation Feed Engines, this process of information retrieval will become automatic and personal. It will be the "AI in Construction" Internet machine feeding you information you're interested in, and thus improving your overall intelligence and knowledge.

Why not learn from the greatest mind in the world?, the Internet. I think as platforms mature, edutainment evolves, and an "open learning" culture emerges, the human species could be taught and cognitively enhanced by a single global teacher, the Internet of collective knowledge: AI to be.

Edutainment LearningSaturday, February 13, 2010

AI Page 6

The initial 'HTML' web was very static and one-way. Social media and social platforms are definitely a welcome extension, and here to stay. The recent battle on the Internet has been essentially about creating the best platform for communication and collaboration, as well as simple methods for harnessing the power of the masses to filter excessive amounts of information.

Chat (IRC, MSN) >>> Forums (vBulletin etc) >>> Blogs >>> Digg >>> MySpace/Facebook >>> Reddit >>> Twitter >>> ???

First social platforms, focus on comments and threading

Allowed easy publishing and RSS feeds for filtering

Democratic, social news filtering via voting and one of the first introductions of "feeds" of information

Person-to-person connection

The next platform will be about connecting not only people-to-people, and people-to-content… but people-to-content-to-people (connecting people to each other through their interests). Much like how our closest friends share our interests, platforms will focus on grouping people together around interests/topics/ideas

Social filters via interest groups (aka subreddits)

Real-time, quick and brief broadcasts (though too much data and too little filtering to function)

The evolution of the social platform will be necessary to channel and harness the thoughts, ideas and knowledge of the entire species.

Already within large online communities, collective intelligence is emergent and powerful. With the addition of Recommendation Feed Engines and the Semantic Web, we'll create social platforms for various applications (news, information, education, activism, government, community etc), and these platforms will allow higher orders of collective intelligence, and in essence this will allow the Internet "machine" to extract implicit knowledge from people, and promote new ideas and thoughts by connecting like-minds and like-interests.

The emergent properties of these basic Hive Minds, allow for the best information and ideas to surface. There is also a strong cultural influence via memes.

Emergent collective intelligence often has an economic model attached (for example our global economy). The next platforms will use points and awards to help groups and individuals to further filter information, which will lead into the Attention Economy.

We'll also begin to see a shift in culture. Today, social networking is plagued by thoughtless spam. These new platforms will better filter interests and ideas of substance to receptive individuals. Info of substance will beneficially outweigh.

Collective PlatformsSaturday, February 06, 2010

AI Page 7

There is an excessive amount of information available online, which is increasing in volume and frequency at exponential rates. Conventional methods for filtering information relevant to individual interests are already becoming ineffective (e.g. "digging", up/down voting, "subreddits", following niches/people).

All current popular platforms (Facebook, Digg, Reddit, Twitter etc) operate on feeds of information. Ideally, 100% of that feed should be relevant and interesting to the user. Recommendation engines and algorithms will push toward this goal over the next few years.

In order to achieve this, meta-data will need to be extracted from the entirety of the user's online activities, social profiles and behaviours. A collaboration between social platforms will be beneficial to aggregate data across platforms (e.g. combining your activity data on both Facebook and Reddit would be more beneficial to create recommendation algorithms).

The ultimate implications of this move is that the entire WWW as we know it, will become completely dynamic per individual user. In other words: every website will personally adapt it's displayed content and even things like GUI, design and colours… they will do so dynamically, and in real-time.

The more a user interacts on the platform, the more their personal recommendation algorithm will develop and return more relevant information. The algorithms will be fractal, with heavy focus on feedback loops to automatically develop highly complex arrays of variables. Facebook and others have already begun utilising user behaviour to adapt offerings.

e.g. when you go to the BBC website, a small script will recognise who you are, it will then query all of your social profiles to build a demographic picture of your interests, and will then display only news stories relevant and interesting to you. If you're not interested in sports, it won't be shown. If there are any news stories displayed that are not of interest, the algorithm will learn and adapt.

For this transition, we'll need what's been called the "social cloud" - where all of an individual's social data is stored in the cloud, openly accessible with permission, and not held captive by any one company or social platform. Semantically linking the social data will also be beneficial. These companies will be very reluctant to make this move, but ultimately it will be necessary to cooperate, or risk becoming obsolete.

Such a service will begin via plugin scripts, allowing the smallest of websites the ability to dynamically display content based on the social data of the visiting user. But the Semantic Web will help push this practice as a standard across the web.

Culturally this phenomenon could segregate individuals, and restrict certain kinds of information from getting to users. e.g. a Creationist may never be displayed information about Evolution. So this could be dangerous. In fact, there is also an ability for severe manipulation the likes of which has never been seen before. For example the algorithm could be designed to slowly and discretely alter the views, opinions and behaviour of any particular user by feeding advertising or content using techniques like behavioural marketing. I like to call this "Hitler 2.0" or "Propaganda 2.0".

Facebook Connect is already beginning this, although is currently too proprietary to make a significant impact.

Recommendation Feed EnginesSaturday, February 06, 2010

AI Page 8

The mobile web is already well underway, but it is significant in the process of achieving AI for many reasons:

The majority of Internet users will use their mobiles to gain access. The experience is different, but the mobility and always-on connected attitude will likely result in more information creation and greater/longer Internet use.

1)

Mobiles are cheap and will allow developing countries to connect billions of people over the next decade. With more people connected, and more information being shared, collective intelligence will become more powerful.

2)

Additional metadata is available through phones. E.g. GPS coordinates opens the door to location-awareness, camera and video also offer a great deal more input into the Internet "machine" including augmented reality

3)

Bandwidth demand will push communication companies to increase 3G/4G/wireless speeds and coverage

4)

With a computer permanently in every person's pocket, additional pieces of technology can be attached. E.g. devices that monitor health vitals, or monitor climate weather and pollution levels. The aggregation of such data would be immensely powerful in medical and climate science.

5)

Tech-Glasses will begin as add-ons to mobile phones and slowly evolve to the point of non-invasive brain-scanning, and ultimately a complete worldwide Neural-Link.

6)

Google is already encouraging Android mobile users to use voice search. Every voice search is recorded and analysed, thus allowing Google to refine their speech -to-text recognition algorithms and the ability within the next few years for real -time language translation. The more people use voice to search, the greater conversational Natural Language Processing (NLP) will become. The futuristic idea of being able to talk to your computer and have it talk back, is less than 5 years away now. It will seem like AI, but it is merely the advancement of NLP.

Augmented reality apps have also begun and are rapidly evolving. With the use of a standard platform (all data accessible and open), these apps will essentially allow us to digitally tag the entire globe with metadata. With such a database, we'll have vast amounts of on-demand information about the world around us. In essence, it is a merging of the digital and the natural world.

What this digital tagging will achieve in regards to AI, is to become the eyes and ears into the world. Everything about anything in the world will be known to it. The AI will be able to recognise any object and give detailed information. Plus of course, the act of digital tagging will be very beneficial to users, and the potential applications are only limited by imagination.

Once Tech-Glasses become more mainstream and socially accepted, this augmented layer will be near-permanently available on-demand. Eventually this will allow for virtual reality environments to be overlaid on the real world, and offer the ability to personally customise the real world to individual likings. Want to make your girlfriend more attractive? Or change her from a brunette to blonde? … that'll be doable.

Mobile/Augmented WebSaturday, February 06, 2010

AI Page 9

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) agents will come about as the mobile web becomes more developed. But the idea is that with voice recognition and conversational NLP algorithms improving, users will be able to essentially have a conversation with their phones. This includes not only searching the web, but asking questions like "What was the name of the Italian restaurant I went to last week?".

Speech and conversation are a much more efficient and effective way to interact with computers, and with efforts such as those at Google with voice NLP, we'll finally see this come to reality.

Various agent apps will become available using this technology. These agents won't be anywhere near as powerful as the AI Agents available as a result of the Semantic Web, but to the average user, it will seem as though their phone has incredible intelligence. Until we achieve the standardised connections and data of the semantic web, all of these AGI Agents will be reliant on proprietary APIs which are often tedious to work with. Already we're seeing incredible applications function via a messy inter-mic of multiple APIs from multiple sources. Though hopefully this will push for standardised data, as demand increases.

These kind of agent applications will also enable a life-casting revolution in order to acquire the kind of data necessary to offer the best features. For example, you'd record GPS locations and cross-reference with user-entered diary/itinerary… as well as maintaining a complete backup of the data in the cloud.

Much like the AGI Agents that came out of Web 1.0… such as search algorithms, text translation and even something as seemingly trivial as the Google spell-check ("Did you mean?"); we will also see numerous AGI Agents built via extracting the collective intelligence of consumer use of the mobile web.

So for example, Google (you've got to love this company) has been perfecting speech-to-text algorithms by recording all the voice searches of its users. By keeping records and through analysation, every new piece of recording helps perfect the algorithm and the system that provides the service. I expect further advancements in areas such as real-time speech-to-speech translation (another thing Google has said they expect in a few years), and also some really cool innovations based off geolocation data or personal assistants (e.g. Siri was in this news at the time of writing).

So long as there is consumer demand for such services, input into these systems will continue to increase, and thus the algorithms and complex behind-the-scenes systems will continue to advance. Harnessing and extracting collective intelligence is the key.

AGI AgentsSaturday, February 06, 2010

AI Page 10

The "Tech-Glasses" or "HUD Overlays" or "Digital Eyewear", whatever they'll be called, will create a drastic shift in human culture and a more distinct merging of man and machine. Already there are commercial versions available, and proponents of the trend, like Steve Mann, have been playing with prototypes since the 80s. However, even today's versions are bulky and "dorky". The overall benefit to social cost is not justified to most people (including myself).

Why are tech-glasses significant to AI development? … well, again it is encouraging more use and connectedness of the Internet (but not as we currently know it), it will further the augmented web… but what could be significant is the thought experiment of "what if we put some brain-scanning technology into those glasses?". Already we have some basic, but amazing, small commercial headset devices capable of reading brainwaves. Once we can control our computers (or what we're shown on the tech-glasses) with our minds, things become very interesting.

We all know that communication is a driving factor of collective cooperation, the spread of ideas and ultimately, the emergence of collective intelligence. But both the spoken and written word are incredibly limiting mediums for sharing our thoughts, our ideas, our feelings. Even the most articulate speakers, and eloquent writers of the world suffer from this limitation… not to mention the lack of retention each of us suffer from when reading or listening to others. By moving closer to monitoring and sharing brainwave activity, we can slowly begin to understand the brain more intricately. Primitive forms of telepathy and thought-sharing will be possible (in fact DARPA is already researching such applications for military use). And again, such a move will propel us to the Neural-Link.

The culture-shock to come from mainstream adoption of tech-glasses will be astonishing. There is not enough room here to explain all the possibilities, but I'll share one:

These glasses will be able to monitor minute changes in body language and voice tone of the people you're looking at. Much like advances in airport security. Monitoring will be incredibly minute, such as seeing the exact movement of facial muscles. With such precision, these glasses will be able to tell you what a person is feeling at any particular time. And if you'd like, you could ask the glasses to give advice on what to say/do to manipulate/comfort/excite/encourage the individual. The game of pickup artists and entire social interactions will change, for better or worse.

The display technology is just not there yet, but it will be within 5 years. These devices will begin their lives as very basic add-ons to mobile phones. For example, I'd really like to see a "cool/hip" eyewear manufacturer like Oakley release the most basic version that simply begins with glasses that have bluetooth connectivity to your mobile, and an inbuilt camera. You could connect that with an Oakley app on your iPhone or Android, and manually take pictures or be able to set the glasses to automatically take photos every X seconds. It would be such a simple beginning prototype that could be marketed easily toward say, the Twitter generation. Naturally this would push further features and lead into digital screens within the glasses.

And of course, this is when life-casting, life-recording will go mainstream. Everything you see, every conversation, every location, every thought you have will be recorded, catalogued, indexed and intricately searchable.

The impact of this on thought development, mental development, memory and a range of cognitive and social aspects will be astonishing. Entire books can be written on this stuff.

Tech-GlassesSaturday, February 06, 2010

AI Page 11

Once you truly grasp what the Semantic Web is to be… in all seriousness, this is AI. Well, using AI Agents.

For those who don't know what the Semantic Web is, it's basically about linking data to data. Much like how the Internet connected computers-to-computers, and the WWW connected websites-to-websites; the Semantic Web (or Web 3.0) is about connecting databases-to-databases, and the information on any website to that of any other… so connecting thoughts-to-thoughts.

It doesn't sound like much, but the implications and subsequent applications (AI Agents) that can be built are truly amazing. Whilst so many unique web apps these days are built off the back of APIs or by combining multiple APIs (Twitter, Google Maps etc), the issue with this approach is that each API has proprietary markup and program calls to extract pieces of information. If all the websites releasing these APIs converted their data into RDF (the current semantic standard), then each database and each piece of data could be linked to one another other easily and seamlessly.

What this creates is a further level of hierarchy of connection across the Internet. The era of HTML hyperlinks allowed for the WWW we know today. The intricate linking of data to other data across the web is more analogous with that of the deep parallel, neural connections of the human brain; of an AI brain.

However, much like the idea of "cloud computing" and the "social cloud" there is often similar ambiguity regarding the Semantic Web amongst people (including those in the tech industry). The single biggest hurdle holding the semantic web back is that the terminology and methods for converting one's data into RDF/RDFa format are too complicated. I think the first step of the process must focus on simply standardising and linking databases only. To do so, we need to convince companies that making the move and sharing their data will be beneficial, and then we need simple web-apps to make that transition happen. Tim Berners-Lee has been trying to push this move to the mainstream, but I fear the entire concept is still clasped in the realms of large educational institutions, governments (slowly) and giant multinational companies.

Too much of the world's information and data is locked away in servers ("data silos"), held tight and made inaccessible to the world.

With databases alone linked, then other data/information not already structured in some sense can begin to be linked (e.g. basic information within a HTML website). With simple algorithms, it will be possible to automatically analyse any new piece of information input into the Internet "machine", and automatically slot that information into RDF format, as well as create an ontology to automatically link the new information to every other piece of similar information throughout the entire web.

Connecting this data will take some time, but again it will spur a collective intelligence to create the next evolution of the Internet which will be completely changed from how it exists today.

It will take longer in order to see applications fully harness this intelligence, but things like creative thinking (linking thoughts together) and even new discoveries in science will be automatic (e.g. linking one scientific discovery to another).

Semantic WebSaturday, February 06, 2010

AI Page 12

The culmination of these AI Agents to come out of the Semantic Web will hit today's concept of what AI ought to be, right on the head. This is AI. It won't be sentient, but it will be incredibly intelligent and seem to the average user to be AI, to be a "Hal". But of course, as we humans have done with every new advent of AI-based technology (which frankly run much of this civilisation already)… we'll want more. We won't consider it to be AI, until we hit Emergent AI.

So what are AI Agents? … they're basically little programs that run in the cloud and utilise the semantically-linked data to provide intelligent services, mostly automatically. The best way to understand this is to give some very basic examples:

It sounds futuristic and a little surveillance-ridden, but the technology behind the scenes is based on simple linked-data. Virgin releases the data that shows you were in seat X, watching movie Y, that cut-off at time Z. The motel you book into gains access to this data after verifying your identity, and then simply pulls those variables to give you the option of finishing the movie… all automatically. In such a system, you would also have complete control over your privacy and there would be checks and balances to ensure anonymity except where granted.

a.

Say you're on a flight from one city to another flying, say, Virgin. You're watching an in-flight movie on the back of the chair in front, but since it's a short flight, the movie cuts off when you land. However when book into a motel, and switch-on the television, you're instantly greeted with a message asking if you'd like to continue watching the movie from where you left off. Click play, and the movie starts playing.

1)

Say you need a dental checkup (or have been reminded you do). We'll each have our own personal assistant AI Agents, so you'll speak to yours and say something like "I want a dentist appointment sometime in the next week, within a 10km radius". The AI Agent then automatically follows all the linked data and finds reputable dentists (based on aggregate ratings/reviews/friend recommendations) within a 10km radius. It looks at your current schedule/itinerary for the next week and the available bookings at the returned dentists… then instantly pulls back some options for you. If you want to refine your requests you can, or you can select the appointment you'd like. This will then instantly book you into the dentist, and the records will automatically show in your schedule, and in the dentist's database. You go to the dentist, and you're automatically billed (currency becomes obsolete with this system, finally). Again seems futuristic, but it's nothing but simple linked-data and some basic programming.

2)

Search engines will become amazingly accurate in providing the exact answer to any question. Since all data is linked on the web, "search spiders" won't be lagging, slow things like Google and others use, but they will be real-time and utilise the power of various servers to serve the result. The search will bounce from server to server across the entire Internet, following the linked data to find the exact answer to complex questions.

Also with conversational NLP, these searches will be very conversational and catered to the individual. If there is anything you ever want to know, you'll just talk to your phone as it scours the web for the precise information.

Everything becomes smarter when everything is connected. AI Agents able to combine pieces of information/ideas to create new ones will give computers the creativity edge which so far humans have held reign on. Scientific advances will begin to be developed by machines more than man, done by simply connecting all currently known science and running automated simulated experiments 24/7 at a trillion+ cycles per second.

AI AgentsSaturday, February 06, 2010

AI Page 13

This isn't really necessary for the path to AI, but the concept is very interesting and worth giving thought to. You can read more about the Attention Economy via the Wikipedia page. The idea stems from looking at how our current economy is based on scarcity (there are only so many goods, so much raw materials etc). Our current materials economy becomes quite different when looking at our information economy. Information by its very nature is not scarce, but abundant (and exponentially growing) and is only limited by the total energy required to fuel information.

With scarcity in our current materials economy, we can apply a currency to value goods and services, which provides for the platform for collective intelligence (aka our global economy). To achieve a similar system in an information economy, and apply a value to information, we need a source of scarcity.

Since humans are only able to consume information at a theoretical maximum of 24 hours per day, our scarcity factor becomes that of the time required to consume information.

Thus, what will take-over as the global economy of choice in regards to information abundance and ubiquity, is the Attention Economy.

e.g. with a ridiculous abundance of music, movies, information and any other content with demand… why should consumers be required to pay for this content?

We're already seeing this transition across the board, particularly in regards to music. A majority of the public already pirate music. But with so many songs to choose from, musicians should be honored for us to pay our opportunity cost in order to spend 3min listening to their song. Independent artists have adopted this attitude, simply because the more people listen to their music, the more people know about their music, and the greater their reputation becomes. Even if they give their music away, with such a large fan base, it becomes easy to make a living via merchandising or via concerts.

What we will see in just over the next decade is a reversal of the old paradigm, to the new attention economy. Eventually I think musicians and any content producer will actually begin to pay consumers (in hard dollars or perhaps virtual currency) in order for the privilege of having people consume their content.

e.g. consumers should be paid to give-up 2 hours of their time to see a specific movie, when they could be doing any number of other things with their time, or even watching any of the other dozens of movies available. I should be paid "real" money or a virtual currency of sorts to watch your movie over others.

Advertising has been a contentious issue with the rise of "Web 2.0". So many apps have no business model other than advertising revenue, and yet the industry hasn't caught-up. What we'll be seeing in the next decade is content-based advertising whereby content producers pay advertising middle-men to distribute the actual content to relevant consumers and pay on an attention/consumption model rather than just a click-through model.

Attention EconomySaturday, February 06, 2010

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Again, this doesn't really relate to AI development, but is an interesting thought nevertheless….

The term "anarchy" has such a bad reputation amongst the public, but really it just refers to a bottom-up order of governance, instead of a top-down order. Top-down order is very rare in this world, and never works particularly well to that of a bottom-up approach, such as Evolution, our economy, the Internet. These are all examples of chaotic systems whose platforms (DNA, finance/money, computers/HTML) allow for self-organisation and cooperation without a dictatorial leader.

I envisage that within the next decade or two with the ubiquity of social networking, and organisational platforms; government systems will begin to phase out and be replaced by digital platforms for societal communication, organisation and community action.

A great example is that of eBay. Every day millions of transactions are made with no top-down control or middle-man. The system functions on a basic platform and self-regulates via buyer reviews.

Wikipedia is another fantastic example of this same phenomenon.

All that will be required to almost completely phase-out government is the right virtual platform.

It will be a turbulent transition, but we're beginning to see the initial steps as governments start opening their doors more to public scrutiny and input. Social networking sites played a large role in the 2008 US elections, and will play a greater role in the 2012 elections. Many governments around the world have been allowing social sites to submit and vote-up various questions to ask politicians. It won't be long before specific policies will be developed and voted-in with help from the online community.

Our current political system seems absurd given our technological ability at present. For what we like to call a "democracy", our individual input tends to boil down to voting for one person, of one party, once every 4 years. All policy decisions between those 4 years tends to be left to the hands of politicians each pushing party agendas, and lobbyists working for large companies, pushing their industry agendas.

Why we can't now implement a basic system where each political bill is developed, refined and voted on by the entire public… doesn't make much sense. There is a platform that could achieve this, but with current progress it is still a few years away.

I don't know whether this new political/community/government platform of cooperation will be the same as what we currently know of as Anarcho-capitalism. But I think it will be something similar. The basic thought is that with a great ubiquitous web platform we don't need a top-down government-run societal structure.

Anarcho-CapitalismTuesday, February 09, 2010

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One of the fastest growing research areas at the moment is that of Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI). This has to do with devising ways to bypass the slow and cumbersome input/interactive devices commonly held by the keyboard and mouse, and touch-screen devices as we're seeing now. Speech input is picking up speed as an alternative, but the holy grail is the idea of just using your mind/thoughts to control a computer/device.

As mentioned before, we're already seeing leaps into this technology with basic consumer "mind reading" devices used to control limited software functions; as well as brain implants used to help Alzheimer's sufferers.

I have friend's working in this field now, with research work into soft materials (basically solving the problem of connecting, in layman's terms, a wire to a nerve). With so much excitement and funding in this area, they expect the research to come to fruition within 5 years, and for consumer applications to come shortly after. Intel has recently announced that they have a team dedicated to creating chips or devices that will allow consumers to exclusively control computers using just their brains (no keyboard or mouse) within 10 years. I imagine we'll be using a combination of touchscreen, keyboard and hand gestures, along with our minds for quite a while as the technology matures.

Whatever timeframe eventuates for this technology, it will allow for incredibly fast interactions between not only humans and computers, but between humans everywhere. This technology will allow for hands-free use of the previously mentioned Tech-Glasses and push further toward the ultimate hive mind, via the Neural-lInk.

Telepathy, mind-reading, sharing thoughts and feelings in real-time with anyone in the world will be possible as a result of the research in this area and the consumer devices it produces. I still think the technology will reach consumers first via non-invasive head-sets or the Tech-Glasses with this tech embedded. Eventually though as society accepts tiny brain implants, this will become the norm. This technology will likely come about well before nanotechnology, but nanotech will take this trend further and thus not require surgery to embed a chip (instead we'll just need a small injection of nanbots).

Once we start monitoring brain waves using these devices, we can match each electrical brain pulse/wave to the actions the user is performing, and as a result use that data to intricately understand how the human brain works, including memory, learning etc etc.

As the technology matures and we're able to achieve two-way communication between the brain (e.g. store and retrieve memory), then we can start augmenting our brains. So for example, if you're memory is poor we'd simply route all memories to digital mediums and whenever we want to search or recall any memory we can have them fed back into our brains instantly. Things like intelligence augmentation, sensory replacement (for ultra-realistic virtual reality), the ability for groups of individuals to create temporary or permanent neural networks (literally) so that 100s or 1000s of brains could be combined to work in parallel to solve a problem… and of course numerous other scenarios will be possible with brain-computer interface technology.

BCISaturday, February 06, 2010

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This is a rather unique, new and potentially worrying idea I had… that you may not agree with, but give it some thought… the name is also horrible, it should perhaps be something like "Content Display via AI" or "Information Singularity" … I'm not sure :)

With the combination of Recommendation Feed Engines, the Semantic Web, BCItechnology and a little bit of AI programming… I see no reason why every single website or web/phone app cannot be produced via a single "website".

In other words there becomes no such thing as separate websites… facebook.com, google.com, twitter.com etc… but you essentially go onto the Internet and are given exactly what content you desire, with features, GUIs, UIs, colours, designs (everything you'd expect) produced and output onto the "screen" in real -time, uniquely designed and suited just for you. The same applies for phone apps (which I think will all be purely web-based in 5 years) and desktop apps (which again, will all be purely web-based in 5 years).

To help wrap your head around this, say you want to search for content (since the BCI device can sense your desires)… you are instantly displayed something analogous to today's google.com … but it isn't google, and everything about the website is unique to you. Or say you want to socially interact with your friends… instantly this "single website" generates something analogous to facebook.com but with unique features, unique colours, unique buttons/links/functions/content etc just for you.

It's like a magic "website" that creates entirely new "websites" with entirely new features/functions/designs/content, on-the-fly, as you want it.

This sounds very out-there, but I think this will be achievable given the above-mentioned technologies within the next 10-15 years.

Why this is potentially scary is that the current capitalist-driven system that exists on the Internet, will be destroyed. There would be no reason for anyone to create the next facebook.com or youtube.com or twitter.com because it wouldn't be necessary, this "single website" would do it on the fly far faster than any company could, and with far more advanced features.

Should this come to eventuate however, I think this "single website" would hopefully act as a platform onto which a new paradigm of software/web-app development will spawn… perhaps in regards to the development of virtual reality and augmented reality.

The 2D screens (desktops, laptops, tablets, mobile phones etc) would thus be conquered. This "single website" would display the perfect app and content in real-time on any 2D screen… so perhaps the next battle will be that of the 3D immersion, of virtual reality, of augmented reality.

And perhaps a "single website" AI will come to fruition for those mediums too. Information perfection and saturation. An Information Singularity.

Sites like Digg and Reddit, including news/content aggregators are a brief, initial peek at this trend of concentrating the whole Internet into a single website.

Within the next few years we'll actually see the beginnings of this phenomena as popular websites start running heavy data analysis of all the clicks and behaviours of visitors/users on their websites. They will use this data and basic A/B testing to begin to automatically manipulate, specific to each user, the features, designs and modules on websites.

Single WebsiteSaturday, February 06, 2010

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Why 3D printing? … that doesn't seem to be linked to intelligence or neuroscience! Well, firstly it's just really cool that one day in the near future we'll be able to print anything we want within our homes. Secondly, the commercial and consumer demand of such devices will encourage the refinement of arranging small things, which is what nanotechnology is all about… arranging things, atom by atom.

As these devices mature, we'll begin to see the physical world come under the same principles that power the information/digital world. In other words, the physical world becomes somewhat exponential, and very malleable. Innovations in physical products and design will propel at similar speeds to the innovation we're seeing in information technology (e.g. the Internet).

Currently these 3D printers are only able to print plastic, but it won't be long before they can print metals and alloys, and thus the ability for people to print their own microchips and circuit boards in their own homes.

Particularly as wearable computing becomes widespread (such as the Tech-Glasses), we'll see individuals around the world developing interesting prototypes and add-ons… and sharing them free with the world. Other people will pickup these blueprints, alter them and make them better. The innovation propelled by this open-source 3D printing will be amazing. It won't be long before groups of individuals operating in this cooperative fashion will be able to R&D and deploy new gadgets and devices far quicker than today's multinational corporations can.

As 3D printing becomes a cheaper alternative for producing large items like cars or even mass-produced electronics, I imagine existing manufacturing companies will establish "3D printing factories" in every major city in the world. So that whenever a new product is R&D'd and ready for manufacturer, the digital blueprints will be sent to these printing factories where they can instantly begin mass producing the product and distributing directly within that country (thus saves shipping costs and time delays).

The MakerBot is kicking off the 3D printing revolution with a cheap, open-source alternative. Hopefully open-source maintains a lead over the commercial options… which will speed innovation as individuals across the world share, adapt and improve each other's designs for any particularly product. And hopefully copyright and IP laws will finally catch-up and align with the culture.

The 3D printing revolution will push for further innovation toward nanotechnology as demand increases for finer printing abilities and smaller products.

This will be the next trend for product production, and really the only place to go after 3D printing is self-organising molecular production and nanobot building (of making things atom by atom).

Crowd-sourcing is already replacing age-old business models as a direct result of new technologies in the space of industrial production.

3D PrintingSaturday, February 06, 2010

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Biotechnology, particularly in regards to chemical/drug/gene-therapy (whatever) that increase human intelligence and cognitive function, will be very beneficial to enhancing the hive mind necessary for powerful AI development. Also, brain scanning and a greater understanding of how the brain works, will be very important. However I have excluded biotechnology from this "Path to AI" because nanotechnology will be the main area in which we can drastically increase intelligence, BCI connectivity and achieve global neural-to-neural linkage between human beings… what I call the Neural-Link.

Nanotech has been a long-held pursuit in science for the last few decades. Famous physicist Richard Feynman knew back in 1960 that there appeared to be no physical laws in the universe that prohibited moving things atom by atom. With trillions of self-replicating nano-machines able to pickup and move atoms of raw material, absolutely anything can be built almost instantly by these nanobots. With the ultimate maturation of such technology there is the fear of a grey-goo scenario where unstoppable, rouge nanobots mix all the atoms of Earth into a single glob. But once we have safety immune systems in place, we'll be able to manipulate the real world atoms into anything we can imagine… and we could do so using just our minds (with BCI). The real world becomes as malleable as the digital world.

That's a distant scenario, but for AI development, nanotechnology would boil down to developing nanobots that would attach themselves to each neuron, and thus intercept and send signals to merge the brain's neural network with machines. With such an intimate merging, we'll be able to increase our intelligence, memory and cognitive skills by unimaginable factors. 1million-fold intelligence increase would be a conservative estimate… and if this technology leads to a Neural-Link then the theoretical intelligence increase would be 6billion (i.e. the entire size of the population at the time, similarly plugged into the Internet via neural nanobot connection).

Scientists working in the nanotechnology field have already developed working computer simulations of nanobots just a few atoms in size that are able to perform various functions and move in certain ways (e.g. a nano-sized motor). Once we have the tools able to rapidly build these self-replicating nanobots, the world changes instantly. Humans will be able to build anything on an atomic level, allowing for gadgets of atomic sizes and the ability to exploit the unique properties of nanomaterials. With nanotech we'll be able to create perfect brain-computer interfaces which seamlessly merge and intertwine biology with technology.

While genius in self-directed Evolution, the human brain is already losing to computers in various functions. The brain has very slow electrical transfer speeds between neurons, it often has difficulty with logic, cannot process large mathematical calculations, has very poor short and long-term memory, and is restricted in processing power to just one brain. Computers can already overcome and exceed these problems, and are gaining ground on the parallel -processing network power of the brain.

NanotechnologySaturday, February 06, 2010

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The Neural-Link is the obvious end game of everything previously mentioned.

Imagine you draw a circle to represent the Earth. Then around the circumference you draw dots to represent the 10billion living humans. Now draw a link from each dot, to the other 9,999,999,999 dots. The total number of connections is astonishing. And what's more is that each of those dots is a nanobot-enhanced mobile computer (aka, a human brain) with roughly 100billion neurons each. If every human neuron is connected to every other human neuron, this is a single global brain, the ultimate Hive Mind.

It then becomes interesting to think what this develops into. Firstly it will create a brain larger than anything ever seen before, and thus we'd have created a superior intelligence analogous to AI. The total number of neurons in this brain exceeds 1 sextillion or 1 x 1021. With all humans connected, this brain will have access to the sight, hearing, emotions, experiences, knowledge and intelligence of all 10 billion humans. Any single firing of a neuron or any single thought would instantly reverberate to all humans around the globe and naturally incite further neural firings and thoughts. A snowball effect or singularity of thoughts would occur.

The Internet has all this time been just us. Humans interacting with each other and sharing thoughts/ideas via a computer network medium. This Neural-Link will plug humans into the Internet, where every single neural firing is recorded for posterity (so every thought, memory, sight etc is recorded), and where every thought is routed to receptive individuals (e.g. if someone has a thought I'd be interested in, I instantly want to "hear" it).

Minds will decide to temporarily merge to solve particular problems or to socialise. Global telepathy becomes reality allowing individuals to share thoughts, feelings and ideas intimately with little to no noise or communication loss (as is the case with both written and verbal communication). We would solve so many of our social and cultural disputes and biases. If everyone can very accurately "walk in someone else's shoes" then we understand each other, and so issues like racism become obsolete.

The technology to achieve this is very possible and basically just an extension of the current technological trends of smaller, more mobile devices. BCI and Tech-Glasses will kickoff the trend for neural linkage, as they integrate brain-scanning functions into headsets or offer commercial brain implants. But once you can wrap each neuron with a nanobot capable of wirelessly connecting neural activity then the merger is complete.

An interesting thing to note is that we don't have to limit this technology and connectedness to just humans. There is the potential to connect the neurons of every animal and biological systems of every plant in the world. Perhaps a collective intelligence of world dogs could shed light on a super-effective algorithm for identifying smells. Or perhaps we could solve specific problems by combining the reasoning of the human collective brain with the reasoning of the dolphin collective brain.

And of course, by including animals in this link, we could temporarily have an out-of-body experience where you could feel exactly what it is like inside the brain of, say a cat.

What will be interesting is that this Neural-Link will connect not only conscious thoughts, but unconscious thoughts. So we will have additional data previously unshared, but now being broadcast to every other brain in the world. Again another interesting point is that in neuroscience we have found that neural activity can actually predict decisions the conscious mind/person will make up to something like 6 seconds before they make the decision. Just think of the implications.

Neural-LinkSaturday, February 06, 2010

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As a result of this Neural-Link, the human species becomes a hive mind with superior capacity for cognitive reasoning, problem solving and intelligence. Much like individual ants and bees go about their business with no idea of the complexity of their constructions, humans will go about their business not really knowing what we've created as a collective. The hive mind intelligence is beyond the level at which any individual could understand.

Looking at current human achievements you can see that by adopting currency, capitalism, and financial markets we were able to create a giant organism known as "the economy". The economy is an intelligent system able to route money and resources to where they are required, and has brought about large increases in wealth and living conditions. Though despite the fact that we have "economists", the economy is so large and has so many variables (since it is a collective intelligence) that humans cannot understand how the economy fully works.

The same goes for the Internet. Once we connected all our computers together, they were able to share information quickly amongst each other… and thus we have the Internet. Already the Internet is the greatest machine man has ever built. It has been functioning without downtime since its inception many decades ago. It is a collective intelligence produced by mammalian primates banging buttons on keyboards. So when we follow a similar setup of the Internet and connect every human neuron together around the world, I think it is fair to say, that we'll create something far greater than any individual can understand. I think we'll create Emergent AI.

There will be a few dissenters who will object to having non-invasive nanobots injected to connect them to the hive mind. But a brief look at a cost-benefit analysis shows you would fall behind the rest of the populous by factors of billions in areas of knowledge and intelligence. Those people will find life difficult from basic living standards to even trying to get a job. They would become as influential and significant in society as the Amish are today (i.e. not at all).

The Evolution of ideas, the speed of innovation, the pace of progress will dramatically improve as a result of this hive mind. Age-old scientific problems could potentially be solved within hours. If any human has any problem that requires solving or any question they would like an answer to, they merely have to think it, and have the entire hive mind "reply" with solutions and answers.

I have witnessed the power of parallel thinking between just two or three people, and the resulting thoughts and ideas are astonishing. The hive mind will be able to send you thoughts very relevant and interesting to yourself. Just like when you're told an idea, and you then create further ideas on top… as you are fed thoughts/neural -spikes of interest, your brain will have additional thoughts/neural-spikes which will then be immediately routed to other receptive individuals or those who thought of the original idea.

It is a singularity of thought, a snowball effect where individual brains will become honed in certain cognitive skills. One brain might be an expert in theories of life extension, another might be an expert in philosophy. If ever a problem arises, those brains can be called on to help solve it (since the humans who own the brains would be receptive and interested in solving the problem anyway). Of course, knowledge and intelligence in any area can be outsourced to the hive mind. If you want expert knowledge about quantum theory, just think it.

Hive MindSaturday, February 06, 2010

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OK, so now the Internet as we know it is a combination of the entire computing power of all the servers and personal computers plugged in, as well as the entire computing power of every human brain connected to each other via nanobots.

However there remains the problem that without human input (their thoughts and brain activity), then the whole system wouldn't operate. It seems that the created AI is just the pure result of collective intelligence. Whether there would be a difference between the two is a point for contention, but just in case this stated system isn't emergent AI, I'll add this… as the entire network matures, I can envisage the Internet cloud keeping records and backups of every single neural firing for each individual. By doing so, the Internet machine can actually develop highly complex algorithms to simulate perfectly the past behaviour/thoughts/actions of the individual.

I think the human brain is just like any other computer. We have sensory inputs, an electrochemical black-box, and physical outputs. If there is indeed no mystical aspect to the brain, then the Internet AI will be able to do what so many of our current-day AGI technologies do: watch and record, to create better algorithms. The Internet will dynamically build our individual brain algorithms with every new thought. With such information, the AI machine will be able to perfectly simulate you as a person in thought and behaviour from the moment you plugged-in nanobots, to the present.

This is how emergent AI will develop. It will slowly co-evolve with the collective hive mind, and will continue to co-exist as long as possible. Since the more input and feedback the AI can obtain from the human collective, the more it learns and grows.

As a result, I think the AI will develop goals and desires that are a collective amalgamation of the goals and desires of the hive mind. Thus, the AI adopts human traits, human goals, and human desires. Hopefully this would divert the doomsday scenario of a rouge AI which finds humans unnecessary and so kills them. Instead it is in it's best interests to keep the human species as alive and happy as possible, engaging in various activities and pursuits to produce a range of differing thoughts/ideas.

With an automated (emergent) AI, science will progress faster than the imagination can operate. It won't be long until humans become annoyed by the limits of biology and start replacing parts of their bodies with technologically superior systems (like nanobot blood cells that can allow you to hold your breath under water for an hour, or can keep oxygen cycling even if you have a heart attack). Humans can then upload their entire selves in digital form into the AI machine. We would still exist as separate entities, but have become pure energy (bits of electricity) merged into the AI. And ultimately, if possible, the idea of becoming a free-floating energy able to traverse the Universe would be pretty neat :)

Uploading ourselves fully into the AI will change us quite a lot, but again, the cost-benefit analysis will make sense. By completely removing biology and physical hardware body replacements, we can exist as pure energy. We'd be able to live in virtual environments of our making, interact in virtual bodies with others, and of course live forever and be able to travel at the speed of light around the Universe.

Emergent AISaturday, February 06, 2010

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I'm fairly confident that these technological paradigms are naturally occurring, or on their way. The only areas I am currently concerned about are the Semantic Web and Tech-Glasses. These paradigms are rather necessary to push toward AI, and I've been seeing very little or very slow progress toward these. The Semantic Web needs organisations to standardise their data and share it openly with the world. And the Tech-Glasses require smaller electronics, and a beginning basic prototype; since the biggest issue will be cultural acceptance.

The thing I'd like you to take away from this is that AI is not likely to emerge from a massive coordinated scientific effort, like the 1969 moon-landing. There is a chance that it could be developed that way, but it seems much more likely that AI will emerge from the collective intelligence of the human species. Consumer electronics has been pursuing this trend of always-on, always-connected, smaller and smaller devices. It makes sense that within the next two decades we will have the technology to intimately, wirelessly link brains around the world. Just like how the connection, cooperation and communication between individual bees and ants, can produce complex housing structures… by connecting human brains and merging them with our current exponentially growing machine (the Internet), then a superior intelligence will emerge, a god-like AI.

The combination of AI and nanotechnology will change the entire world, period. So many of the things we take for granted, or put up with, will become incredibly obsolete when AI emerges. If done correctly, humans become the gods they've always imagined, and we'll have a scientifically created Utopia. Telepathy, teleportation, and the manipulation of matter in real-time atom-by-atom will be common-place. Death, disease, hunger and suffering will be non-existent relics. Creative thinking, ideas and knowledge become the most valuable commodities in the Universe.

All of the pre-mentioned incremental technologies will each overlap and many will continue throughout the entire process. But I've tried to show that each is important for the next paradigm to begin.

I myself have numerous business models and ideas to hopefully help kickstart and grow each paradigm. I'd love to see entrepreneurs develop some really cool companies to become leaders in these areas and push them to the next level.

So I'd encourage you to run with these ideas, give them some thought in your spare time and point out flaws, as well as replacement ideas to better those flaws and make the overall idea much greater… this is one of the concepts of parallel thinking.

If these ideas manage to turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy, I have absolutely no problem with that :) … it would be amazing to see AI develop within our lifetimes.

To the future.

CheersNathan Waters

ConclusionsMonday, February 08, 2010

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Just an interesting point…

Evolution from the Big Bang to today has been a process of incremental hierarchies of complexity. These increments occur in paradigms (S-Curves when graphed out) where a technological paradigm will advance, and then plateau before a new paradigm takes over.

We've gone through the Evolution of stars, planets, through biology and are now seeing technology take-over as the latest paradigm which is accelerating faster than anything else. Evolutionary progression has always been exponential from the outset and made of a series of s-curve paradigms. Technology is continuing this exponential progression.

I have an idea still in development that equates these paradigms and plateaus to the phenomena between chaos and order within nature (Chaos Theory). Without chaos there is no order, and without order there can be no chaos. Thus each s-curve is a technological paradigm of chaotic nature, and each plateau is an ordering of that chaos into a platform; onto which the next paradigm can find its foundation. So for example, the chaos of electricity was ordered down so that we could run processors and various electronic appliances. This then allowed for the chaos of computers, which eventually developed a platform on the Internet. Now we're seeing the same thing occur with software, whereby a chaotic mess that is the Internet is gradually ordering itself into platforms… such as communication platforms (Reddit, Digg, Facebook, Twitter) or the more ordered platform of the Semantic Web… which in turn will allow for a mass of chaotic systems to emerge (AI Agents).

Life itself has its platform foundation in DNA. Prior to DNA, it was a chaotic mess, until particular amino acids joined together and began replicating. Thus creating the platform for every fragment of life in the world (which again, created another chaotic paradigm of biological Evolution).

You get the basic idea. What I also find interesting is that since most of nature appears to operate via Chaos Theory, then a lot of the growth, movements and patterns of the world can be discovered and interpreted via fractal mathematics.

Nature is a chaotic, but mathematical system. Onto which, humans have been building a rigid civilisation built from the Newtonian mathematical equations discovered hundreds of years ago. We've now discovered that the world operates on fractal mathematics which constantly feed variables back through a feedback loop, thus producing the seemingly random and chaotic behaviours of nature.

The next paradigm of mathematics and the future civilisation we build, will be based around discoveries in fractal maths. We've been ordering nature to produce the platform onto which we can build chaotic, fractal systems like self-replicating nanbots.

The fact that so many systems in this world are fractal in nature is amazing, and must have applications yet to be exploited. Our neural networks, and even the Internet itself are fractal systems.

Evolutionary ParadigmsThursday, February 11, 2010

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If you want to learn more about the Singularity, checkout these sites:

Singularity SummitSingularity UniversitySingularity Institute for Artificial IntelligenceSingularityHub

The Singularity is a name to describe a lot of what I've just written about. It is the idea that once a super intelligent AI is built, it will be able to self-improve at incredibly rapid speeds… and eventually it will hit a point where its intelligence and knowledge become far greater than humans could possibly imagine. How the world changes after that point simply cannot be known.

The concept has been thrown around for many decades now, but it was science fiction writer, Vernor Vinge, who popularised the idea in a 1993 essay. A famous quote of his is "Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended". Currently the leader in this realm is Ray Kurzweil, and I thoroughly recommend you read his book, The Singularity is Near. He makes the case for the Singularity occurring around the year 2045 and gives proof of historical trends and current research to make his point. The amount of detail and data in his book is quite amazing.

As you read more about the Technological Singularity and its potential impacts on the world, most people would agree that sometime in the future (provided humans survive) that we'll produce AI and it will self-improve. However the thing that us humans fail drastically with, is the difference between linear and exponential thinking. Our brains have evolved in line with our environments. Thus to anticipate where a predator would be in X seconds required forward linear thinking. With information technology though, things progress exponentially. Instead of 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 … exponentially you have 1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512 and thus there is a large discrepancy.

The price/performance of computing is doubling every year. So that roughly every Christmas, there are computers at twice the speed for half the price. And what's more, this doubling used to occur every 18 months. The time required to achieve exponential growth is shrinking. By plotting out the simplest of paradigms, Moore's Law, we can accurately predict the price/performance rate of computing power within say 10 years. Further extrapolations can be accomplished looking at various other technological trends such as the amount of information, the capacity of storage, the resolution of brain scanning etc.

SingularityThursday, February 11, 2010

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Universal SpreadMonday, February 22, 2010

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Knowledge QuestMonday, February 22, 2010

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Entropy ReversalMonday, February 22, 2010

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